Knoword, Redefined

Last night, we launched a totally rebuilt and reimagined version of Knoword. We’ve been working hard behind the scenes to make the platform faster, more powerful, and even more helpful for creating and exploring vocabulary.

This isn’t just a new look—it’s a fundamental upgrade designed to make your experience even better, whether you’ve been with us for a while or are just starting to discover the fun of custom vocabulary packs. Let’s take a look at some of the key new features:

Contents

• Audio clues
• Magic Import
• Generate pack cover images
• Our AI philosophy: helpful tools, not the full solution
• Many other improvements
• We’d love to hear what you think

Audio clues

At first, we only offered text-based clues, then in 2021 we introduced image clues. Now, we’re adding another dimension to the mix! Audio clues allow you to use sound to describe a term. That could mean spoken words, a sound effect, a snippet of music, or anything else.

You have the option to record and upload your own audio clips, or you can type in text, and our AI can generate clear, natural-sounding speech in seconds. This feature is included in our Pro and Team plans.

Incorporating audio can be particularly helpful for learners who benefit from hearing information, for students who might find reading challenging, or for subjects where sound is important, such as practicing pronunciation in a language or exploring music concepts.

Ready to add sound to your packs? Our guide to managing words will walk you through how to incorporate audio clues.

Magic Import

Creating packs just got a whole lot easier with 🪄 Magic Import. Our latest AI-powered tool allows you to turn a list of words into fun clues in seconds.

Simply type or paste in a list of terms, one per line, and Knoword will generate text-based clues and polish up your terms, correcting spelling and capitalization mistakes automatically. Before adding the words to your pack, you’ll have an opportunity to review and edit the clues, or go back and generate a new set of clues.

If you have a specific style or focus in mind for the clues, you can add notes to guide Knoword in generating your clues. For example, you could add a note like “Make the clues sound like riddles” or “Clues should be written at a 5th grade reading level.”

Best of all, Magic Import is available without restrictions to all accounts, free or paid. To learn more about Magic Import and try it yourself, check out our guide to importing words.

Generate pack cover images

First impressions can make a big difference, and it’s no different for packs on Knoword. Cover images help packs stand out, offering a visual representation of your content that can make them more inviting to teachers and learners alike. We also know that finding the perfect image online or taking the time to create one yourself can often feel like a hassle.

Now you can create eye-catching cover images for your packs in a snap. From the pack editor, click on the “Add cover image” button, and look for the “Generate” tab in the window that pops up. Click the big “Generate image” button, and then after a few seconds, you’ll have a fresly generated cover image. Easy, right?

This feature is available to all users on our Pro and Team plans.

Our AI philosophy: helpful tools, not the full solution

We’re really excited about Magic Import and generated cover images, but we acknowledge that AI is a contentious issue in the world today. That’s why we wanted to share a bit of background on the way we see AI, and how it fits into Knoword.

While AI can be a powerful tool for creators, it isn’t always sufficient on its own. It’s essential for a human to verify, edit, and polish the content that AI algorithms produce for us. AI tools are just that: tools. We can’t expect them to do the whole job, and for that reason, we’re announcing some changes to the way our free and paid tiers work.

Previously, our free plan limits looked like this:

• Create up to 5 packs manually, in total
• Generate up to 5 packs using AI per month
• You can’t make any edits to, or delete any of your AI-generated packs

This structure contradicted the way we look at AI as helpful tools, not the full solution. So, we adjusted the way that the free tier works to encourage the combination of human thought with the convenience of AI.

Here’s what the free plan looks like now:

• Create up to 5 packs in total
• You can edit and delete any of your packs
• No restrictions or limits to pack generation or Magic Import features

We think this makes the free experience much more flexible and friendly, and aligns it better with our AI philosophy. For a complete look at what’s included in the free and paid plans, please visit our updated pricing information page.

Many other improvements

This update goes beyond the big new features. We’ve listened to your feedback and made lots of smaller, but significant, improvements throughout the site:

• Duplicate any public pack: You used to only be able to duplicate your own packs. Now, you can duplicate any public pack to use as a starting point for your own creations.

  Want to prevent your pack from being duplicated by others? Just mark it as private in the pack editor.

• Detailed assignment insights for everyone: You no longer need a paid membership to see exactly which words were answered correctly or incorrectly on submitted assignments. All users now get detailed insights.

• A better help center: We’ve reorganized our help articles into more focused, step-by-step guides covering all the key features and workflows in Knoword. You can now find in-depth information about any topic in our guides page.

• Enhanced gameplay (classic mode gets an upgrade!): Remember Puzzle mode with its crossword-style hints? We’ve taken the best parts from Puzzle mode and integrated them directly into Classic mode for a single, intuitive experience:

  • The answer area now shows little boxes for each letter in the word (or words).
  • Correct letters will light up green, and incorrect ones will turn red right away. This gives you immediate, clear feedback as you type.
  • The entire answer area will also get a red border, further emphasizing that a mistake was made somewhere.

• Trying out a new look for games: On larger screens, we’re testing a new layout where the clue appears on the left, and the answer area is on the right. We hope this makes better use of your screen space and feels more natural to read left to right instead of up and down.

• More control over game settings: Want to make Classic mode more challenging? You can now customize your game by turning off:

  • First letter hints (“Starts with _”)
  • Typing feedback (the letter boxes)
  • The hint that becomes available after building a streak of 5 or more correct answers
  • The extra time that gets added after correct answers

  You can find these options in the settings menu (click “Settings” at the bottom) when playing Quick Play or any pack.

• Improved searching and browsing:

  • Searches will now show results for both packs and collections.
  • Language filters will now only show languages that are relevant to your current search or category. You can also see the number of packs for each language before you filter.
  • Categories are now in a simple dropdown menu. You can only have one category filter active at a time.
  • Link-based pagination means you won’t lose your place when you go back and forth between searching/browsing and playing packs.

• “Stars” are now “Bookmarks”: We’ve renamed “Stars” to “Bookmarks,” which we think is a clearer way to describe saving packs you like. You can access all your past stars and future bookmarks in your My bookmarks page.

• Polished pack printing: The print pack window now gives you more space to configure and preview your worksheets or flashcards before you download them. Learn more about printing packs in our printing guide.

We’d love to hear what you think

Phew! That’s a lot of information. We’ve put a lot of care into this update, and we truly believe it makes Knoword a more helpful, intuitive, and enjoyable platform for everyone.

We really hope you enjoy exploring the new site. Please dive in, try out the new features, and see how they can make your learning and creating even better. If you have any feedback or suggestions, or if you think we’ve missed something, please don’t hesitate to contact us and tell us your thoughts.